You know the one: A mom arrives at the open bathroom door and smiles as she watches her helpful little boy mopping the floor, swooshing the mop back and forth. Her smile instantly disappears when the kid stops mopping, plunges the mop into the toilet, and resumes mopping.

Good intentions. Wrong approach.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp last week signed what is known as the Heartbeat Bill, legislation that makes it illegal to have an abortion after a fetal heartbeat has been detected in the womb, usually at six weeks and typically before women know they’re pregnant. It also threatens women with life in prison for breaking the law. The exceptions: A fatal deformity, mother’s life is jeopardized, and rape or incest with police corroboration.

Justifiably outraged, Milano grabbed a figurative mop, plunged it into the toilet, and tweeted:

“Our reproductive rights are being erased. Until women have legal control over our own bodies we just cannot risk pregnancy. JOIN ME by not having sex until we get bodily autonomy back. I’m calling for a #SexStrike. Pass it on.”

Like Milano, I’m pro-choice. The government has no business telling a woman what she can and can’t do with her body, much less threaten decades of incarceration. If legislators are so interested in women's rights, perhaps they should begin by passing the Equal Rights Amendment.

But make no mistake, a full-court press to outlaw abortion across the land has begun. An anti-abortion law similar to Georgia’s is being considered in neighboring Alabama. Ohio, Mississippi, Iowa, North Dakota and Kentucky have passed similar laws. According to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights research and advocacy group, more than 250 bills restricting abortions have been filed in 41 states this year. With a stacked conservative deck in the Supreme Court, Roe v. Wade is in the cross hairs.

Women being directed to withhold sex from men until they get what they want runs contrary to feminism. Women being asked to abstain from an activity from which they, too, derive pleasure to protest something being done to them is nonsensical and runs contrary to what women are all about. Sex shouldn’t be held as a carrot on a stick by women, dangled tantalizingly just out of a man’s reach until the man acquiesces to her demands. This is not how women today should want to be viewed.

Peggy Drexler, a research psychologist and author, agrees.

“Think about it,” she wrote in an op-ed on CNN.com. “In calling for a sex strike as a way to regain ‘bodily autonomy,’ as she put it, Milano is implying that women pretty much only have sex to please men or for (having) babies. There's no acknowledgment that women might have sex for their own pleasure. Calling for a sex strike also suggests that women can, and should, bribe men with sex, effectively reinforcing an age-old stereotype, which feminism has worked hard to debunk, that all women have to offer is their bodies.

“It largely serves to reinforce the idea that women’s power lies primarily in their willingness to ‘give’ men sex and that abstinence is the way to get that power back.”

Added Jessica Valenti, a prominent feminist author:

“The idea of a sex strike, where sex is something men seek and women withhold, is the same regressive model of sexuality that Republican men use to legislate! No thanks.”

While Milano’s unrealistic directive to women may have resulted in an immediate yet likely short-lived attention bounce, she may have been better served by suggesting women and men join forces by voicing their opinions by contacting legislators, donating to pro-choice organizations, or by volunteering with voter registration groups to vote out those who oppose a woman’s right to choose.

Milano was asked how long her sex strike may last.

“I’m not sure,” she said.

David Bugliari’s response is eagerly awaited.

He’s her husband.

Columnist Phil Gianficaro can be reached at 215-345-3078, pgianficaro@theintell.com, and @philgianficaro on Twitter.

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